Blogger and Copyright Infringement

I updated my blog (http://visualperspective.wordpress.com/) with a post about copyright infringement. Part of the reason I wrote this blog was due to the actions of another blogger who stole a photo to use on their site. This blogger doesn’t see anything wrong with it and has written two blog posts slamming the photographer who sent him a standard notice of copyright infringement. This problem has been an ongoing discussion in the photography community, a lot of bloggers don't seem to realize you have to have a photographer’s permission in order to post a photo on your blog or you are breaking the law in several countries. Some of the biggest online offenders seem to be bloggers that go out and do the snatch and grab. How many of you are aware of what copyrights are, that images are copyrighted and it is illegal to use them without permission? I’m working to spread awareness about this ongoing problem and to educate more people about the issue so I thought this would be a good place to bring the discussion.

Replies to This Discussion

My husband is pretty active in the online photography community so I am very aware of copyrighting on images (as well as other things). It is my policy to not post pictures/illustrations/etc. without permission from the artist.

I know my hubby would be very upset if someone used one of his images without his consent.

You might be interested in a recent paper on "The challenges of intellectual property for users of Social Networking Sites" (http://eprints.qut.edu.au/14858/). It uses a knitting/crochet community, Ravelry, for the case study, and the focus is mostly pattern copyright, but it's got some interesting points on a) how some people have little understanding of what copyright is and b) how copyright law really doesn't have the needed flexibility to deal with the current electronic means of communication.

Too many people believe that just because something is posted on the internet, it's free for the taking. Unfortunately, the internet is the wild, wild west of copyright. And it's not just the internet. Recently I saw a question from a woman who had an out-of-print knitting pattern that many people were interested in. She didn't see the problem with making copies of the pattern and distributing them, since the designer wasn't responding to her questions about it, as long as she didn't sell them. And then she got angry when informed what she wanted to do was illegal; those of us who knew about copyright and were trying to educate her were apparently the jerks.

Only if the owner of the photo gives you permission. Images posted on Flickr to the public are there for people to view, but not to use without permission. :-)

Edited to add: There are some photos that are posted in Flickr and will note that permission is granted for anyone to use them in certain ways. For example, I have posted some of my Flickr photos of yarn I have in a group for people to use in their account on a knitting/crocheting site so they can post pictures of the yarn they have in their stash. It's helpful for people who don't have access to digital cameras or don't feel they take good pictures, but that's the extent of the permission I've granted.

You always have to look at the license of a photo on all sites. Some photos have one of the Creative Commons license which means they might be uasable, Alot of the photo on Flickr though are all rights reserved and you can not use them without working out a deal with the photographer.

What about comics. I see tons of people post comics and I'd love to post some, but I am assuming you need permission???? I've tried researching it and am having a hard time finding answers to my questions.

I found on the site that a comic is just an image. So I answered my own question. Does anyone know if it is legal to link to post an image that is on someone else's site w/o actually downloading it? You'd select "post image" and give the other url as the location - if the person takes the image down, it would not show up on your site anymore.